Posted
by
kdawsonon Saturday December 16, 2006 @09:13PM
from the restricted-computing dept.

FrankNFurter writes to note the launch yesterday of the FSF's BadVista campaign against Microsoft's new operating system. BadVista's aim is to inform users about the alleged harms inflicted by Vista on the user and about free software alternatives. Quoting program administrator John Sullivan: "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care."

The article you were referring to was rather lackluster - I read the first page and couldn't be bothered to click next. Heck, needing better hardware, more RAM and more disk space are all separate reasons! Not only that, they're all top 10.

I'm not a Vista fanboy, but this and the other articles linked smell of desperation. I would think there would be enough legitimate, well reasoned reasons to bash Vista without having to resort to FUD already.

No. People use Windows because it had first mover advantage. Windows is an operating system running on commodity hardware, which comes bundled with said commodity hardware. It has a vast catalog of software running on it. Including applications and services which have become defacto standards such as Microsoft Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Exchange. It is also the most viable commodity PC platform for gaming and multimedia because of its driver, API and app support. You can get World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights 2, Medieval Total War, Oblivion. Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat. Lightwave, 3D Studio. That is the reality. Microsoft may try to spin things as if it was something different, as if people used Windows for its low support costs, but that pack of lies should not make us blind enough to see the truth for what it is.

Developers, developers, developers... Microsoft basically gives away its development tools to students. Microsoft Visual Studio is actually a pretty decent development environment. Shame the Windows APIs are an utter mess and brain damaged to the extreme. Hence.NET. I believe that in order for an operating system to overthrow Windows, it must have lower barriers for entry due to less brain damaged APIs and simpler programming. NeXT could have been the thing if the hardware wasn't so bloody expensive and hard to get. Not to mention they were stuck on an Objective C mindset while C++ was gaining ground.

Linux already has the free GNU toolset. PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby. It will soon have a wholly free Java toolset from Eclipse to the JDK. To me the largest weakness in Linux is the multimedia support. I am not surprised by the lack of multimedia apps and games for Linux. Try getting two Linux programs to use the soundcard without one locking the other up. Try getting 3D graphics to work properly.

The OSS sound API sucked. ALSA sucks. OpenGL support is feeble. Why does not every Linux distro come with something like OpenAL? Why must users have to painstakingly compile and install it themselves? Why must users have to install closed source and buggy graphics drivers? Certainly some of these problems are difficult to solve, since there are barriers from the hardware manufacturers. However there is plenty of room for improvement even despite that. The sound situation being a good example. Why is there no standard Linux media API? MPlayer comes with its own, VLC another, there is FFMPEG, then there is GStreamer and whatever the KDE people use. WTF!

The problem with being a good liar, is that eventually you start believing what you say. Then you act as if it was true and you end up destroying yourself. Being a compulsive liar is a dangerous thing to be. Dismissing the real reasons Windows is at the position it is today as if it was merely due to rhetoric is doing a disservice to yourself.

First mover advantage? Bollocks. Apple had first mover advantage twenty years ago, but Microsoft came through to lead the market. Apple was the most viable commodity platform for gaming and multimedia also.

To this day, they give away development tools not only to students but to everyone who buys one. On every mac sold, there's a compressed copy of Xcode; anyone can sign up to the ADC. It has persistently been the leader in the film industry and the graphics industry, except maybe in the last couple of years where it's coming towards a level pegging. But as is obvious from market share, those reasons make little difference.

A huge number of 'geeks' move away from windows to some flavour of linux, whether clean install or parallel OS. The problem is not in having a better OS - the problem is in the marketing and the general mindset of the population - they're used to Windows, an upgrade is an upgrade, linux is difficult to install (it may not be from the inside, but from the outside it's a dangerous beast - unfamiliar and with no grandly laudable advantages). While you expand nicely on APIs, the average home user doesn't even know what an API is. They have no clue whether the windows APIs are the same as or different from any other. Once someone is interested enough to get technical, sure - but most don't.

I believe the Apple Macintosh was in a different market. As a teen I remember looking at an Apple marketing brochure and being impressed by the specs. Then I noticed it came with a monochrome screen (crap for games) and I couldn't change the monitor because it was bolted into the main unit. None of the computer shops I knew would stock Apple machines. Not to mention the price. There were models with color, but they were priced way out of my league.

And, yeah, I agree with the parent, that article is rather bad. I mean listing a learning curve as a short-coming? If something is going to change (for better or worse) some time investment from the users will be required.

Most of the 'shortcomings' listed in the article are either purely speculative or worse, revealing
that the author lacks insight. Just to pick a few examples:

1. SMB2: Vista introduces a new variant of the SMB protocol called SMB2, which may pose problems for those connecting to non-Microsoft networks, such as Samba on Linux.

Purely speculative.

7. Five Versions: The array of Vista editions could prove to be three too many, and upgrades between versions remain an unknown.
8. Activation: The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.

More guesswork.

9. Storage Space: With Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.

Hardly relevant, any hard drive sold within the last few years will allow > 100GB.

10. Backup: See No. 9. Backing up desktops will take a great deal of space.

12. Learning Curve: Vista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.
13. Cost: Moving to Vista can prove to be expensive when one considers the price
of the OS, the cost of hardware upgrades and the cost of migration.

These are not issues specific to Vista. A platform switch will always be a costly affair (the cost of retraining your staff is several orders of magnitude greater than anything else).

And so it drags on... It might very well be that some of the issues raised are indeed
actual problems, but as the article stands it's mostly FUD.

Try again: MS released Vista after 4 years of development, but it doesn't work with their flagship SQL database. Why wouldn't you expect there to be driver problems too? A lot of places still don't sign their drivers.

If it was built in the last two years, it's probably "Vista Capable". A sticker does not enable some magic compatibility.

Not only that, but when I was at Best Buy yesterday, almost every computer they had on the shelves were sporting those "Vista Compatible" stickers. That doesn't sound like a slow approach to offering Vista Compatibility...

The "25 Shortcomings of Vista" reeks of misconceptions or even just plain outright lies. I'm just going to pick out one that is, as you said, purely speculative. I have a samba server setup at home on Gentoo and I can access it just fine from linux. WinXP can access my Vista PC fine, as can my samba server mount and use a share I setup on Vista.

Also, #18:

Buried ControlsMany options and controls are further buried, requiring a half-dozen mouse clicks or more to get to. Network settings and display settings are offenders here.

Funny, some might have said the same thing in WinXP, until they realized there is a classic view. Vista also has this classic view.

And, #25:

WordPadAbility to open.doc files has been removed.

Are they serious? Who the hell uses WordPad to open.doc files? I can't even believe they would list this as a shortcoming. When people want to open.doc files, they use the obvious program: Microsoft Word or OpenOffice. Besides, even when you could open.doc files in WordPad, it never opened them correctly - if the document contains images of any kind, don't count on viewing them, and it never got table data aligned correctly.

#8:

ActivationThe need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.

Key Management ServiceYour organization can host the Key Management Service (KMS) internally to automatically activate computers running Windows Vista. To use the KMS, you must have a minimum of 25 computers running Windows Vista that are connected together. Computers that have been activated through KMS will be required to reactivate by connecting to your organization's network at least every six months.

Currently the KMS software runs on a local computer running Windows Vista or the Microsoft Windows Server Code Name "Longhorn" operating system. In the future, it will run on the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system.

Last but not least, #6:

MemoryVista loves RAM, but more is better. Plan on 2 Gbytes to meet real-world needs.

No... just, no. Vista does use more RAM than WinXP, but why do you think that is? That's right, Aero and the Windows Sidebar. Between those two, I'm using a whopping 48 megs of RAM. You can always turn them off if your system is strapped for RAM. Right now my system is sitting at 696MB usage, which might seem like a lot, until you read that 452MB of that is for cache. So, I'm really only using 244MB.

People who just installed the OS and would like to read the stuff they got in e-mail? This is especially pathetic since MS does have a Word viewer and Apple TextEdit at least retrieves basic text and formatting from Word documents.

Computers that have been activated through KMS will be required to reactivate by connecting to your organization's network at least every six months.

Just to pick up on the laptop issue, it is possible, and indeed recommended by Microsoft to use non-expiring keys on laptops. They activate over the web to MS's central servers just once, just like a home license key does.

Just to pick up on the laptop issue, it is possible, and indeed recommended by Microsoft to use non-expiring keys on laptops. They activate over the web to MS's central servers just once, just like a home license key does.

The GGP/Article was talking about Vista requiring you to "check in" every 6 months or lose access to your system. MS should never be allowed, technically or legally, to arbitrarily turn off your system until you jump through some more hoops for that. Yes, this "never" i

People who just installed the OS and would like to read the stuff they got in e-mail? This is especially pathetic since MS does have a Word viewer

So, uh, what's the problem? People who just installed the OS (and have for some inexplicable reason decided to read word documents they were sent in emails before they install Office) can just use MS's Word viewer. It's not like they could ever edit a document decently with Wordpad, so they're not losing any significant capability.

Are you content to be only a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control?

You mean like using an online "office" product like Writely? Or a photo management site like Shutterfly? Maybe you are referring to having a Gmail account for your email? Seems to me people are flocking to be "a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control".

"Seems to me people are flocking to be 'a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control'."Just because there are not free alternatives for everything, yet, or that some people will choose to give up their freedoms for extra features does NOT mean that the FSF fighting for freedom or trying to inform people isn't a worthy cause.

So let the other people 'flock' towards systems where others are in control, if they do not put a premium on their freedom then that is their choice - the best anyone

Yes. Good examples, except one thing. I didn't buy Google, I didn't pay for the servers google is running on, I don't expect Google to bend to my will or help me work (though it does at times). An OS is supposed to be an operating system. Not a Media center / word processing / DRM providing / internet browsing magical box. I have programs that do all of that, I don't use Windows Media Center, Word Pad, IE, for them.

As computer users we have slowly been giving up more and more of our computer to Microsoft and other OSes (even Mac is starting to expand). I think it's time we start saying "Fuck you" to people who over charge us so they can take our computer and run rampant on our hardware. I don't think it's time for Linux if you don't already run it. But it's time for us to remain on Windows XP. It's time to demand that DirectX 10 get ported to XP if you need it. It's time to basically stop taking shit from OSes and start demanding a better OS. Dos could give you a disk operating system for 640k, All I want a simple GUI, that all the programs now run on. Why am I sacrificing 2 gigs of memory just to my OS when it's something that should only require a couple megs if done properly. If we want to clog our systems it's our option.

That's my opinion. But i believe it's anyone else who is sick of being forced to upgrade every 3-5 years to an OS that takes at least double the processing power. Moore's law? Didn't know Moore's first name was Peter.

If someone else is hosting the service, sure.Are you content to use bandwidth that's ultimately controlled by someone else (your ISP)? How about email, do you run your own email server?Someone providing a service is completely different from someone providing a product. If i purchase a product (some software) and use it together with another product i already own (a computer), i don't want to relinquish control over any of my existing products. They are my physical property, and should be under my total con

This type of thing is why I'm all for Vista. The more Microsoft tries to lock down the computer, the more frustrating it is for the end users, and the more people will flock to OSS, and the greater market share may make it profitable for someone to figure out why the sound on my Ubuntu box is about half as loud as it should be. I'm not smart enough, but dammit if more people are involved in the market someone will figure it out for me. So bring on the DRM and trusted computing and locked-down everything,

The owner of the computer, even with root ("Administrator") status, can have at most only the third privilege level.

This is pure crap... Anyone with 2 brain cells has heard of UAC, even if why people hate it. The baseline is, running as administrator, you can elevate all the way to the top, this is trusted installer, and what the UAC prompt is all about.

As default, administrator on Vista is not like root on *nix. This is a good thing considering the level of 'knowledge' that most Windows users have about

Did you miss the umpteen stories about PatchGuard and the various anti-virus companies complaining and Vista DRM systems and the one about some security researcher finding a way to break the driver security model?Every single story comes down to the same fundamental point... Vista is designed to be secure against the owner.

What you said about User Account Control (UAC) is totally wrong. User Account Control ONLY elevates you to hand-cuffed-Admin level. You are still locked out of System level. It is impossi

I have to kind of laugh at the entire situation. This is much like going up to an individual standing in a town that has three stores - only one of which has apples, and the other two having hardware. Imagine going up to the individual,"You know, that store charges too much for apples and has a stranglehold on the competition."

I've read through parent post a couple of times, and I could find no compelling reason in it for upgrading from any existing version of Windows to Vista. Actually, I could not identify any reason at all to upgrade in that post.

So why would the author of parent be willing to spend money on Vista when he apparently already has a version of Windows that provides him with everything he wants? It seems like he has done a pretty good job of stating the case for not upgrading. It isn't as if his current version

I've been running Vista as the primary OS since Beta 1, and have watched it improve significantly. That said, there's nothing at all compelling about it. There are some really nice things, to be sure, but nothing that tells me "YOU MUST RUN THIS EVERYWHERE NOW!" Much-improved Event Viewer, improved firewall, better IPv6 support, integrated WPA2 compatibility, better naming conventions for directories, and a few other things are outweighed by the overbearing security architecture and the apparent need of Microsoft to HTML-ize everything. There are times when this is good, but there are also a lot of times when tabbed dialog boxes are good. I don't want to click a link for every little thing, especially when it's going to open a very XP-looking dialog box anyway.

Size is also a major problem. On my notebook (2GB RAM), there is a pre-allocation of 2GB for the hibernation file and 2.6GB for the swap file, making for a 10.5GB 32-bit Vista installation and a 12.7GB 64-bit installation using Vista Enterprise. That's ridiculously large, as I can build up a complete Linux installation with OpenOffice and KOffice, some games, and an entire suite of security apps and utilities, and remain fairly easily under 6GB without much effort.

The complete change in how Video works in Vista should be a primary reason for people to upgrade, but you don't see many tech people out here that get it.

Vista's new graphics system is not about eye candy, although that is a good side effect. Here are just a few things that the new Vista graphic system has that you can't do on earlier versions of Windows.

- It can multi-task GPU RAM with system RAM intelligently. Meaning if your Video card only has 128mb or RAM, and you want to run all the extra High Quality Textures in a game that would normally want more GPU RAM, Vista will let the game do this, seamlessly with existing games.

The multi-tasking of GPU RAM also extends to GPU multi-tasking as well, which is a new concept and works even marginally already with current generation boards from ATI and NVidia. So you get GPU RAM and GPU multi-tasking that also extends beyond a single game or application or even the interface itself.

On Vista for example, you can load WoW, SWG, CoH, and pick a good FPS, put them all in a Window and they will run side by side with VERY little FPS drop in any of the applications. Now take into consideration they all want the GPU to themselves, and they all want all the GPU RAM. However, it just freaking works in Vista, and works well. This example I give is one demonstration one of our techs uses. He will set the characters to auto-run in the applications and he will then hit Flip 3D, angling all the applications in perspective on their side with all the Aero effects, and point out to people how the FPS didn't change in any of the applications. And this is with a 256MB NVidia 6800 card that is almost two years old.

- Accelerated drawing. Everyone should know Vista adds 3D technology to the basic desktop and desktop applications, but another fact missed is that even the old 2D drawing of applications uses the 3D GPU functions to accelerate rendering. And this happens on even old DirectX 7 cards from 1998 that couldn't dream of running Aero/Glass.

How does this affect everyone? Well the display, rendering and movement of bitmaps and vector images is significantly faster than on WindowsXP, or any other OS. Take an application like CorelDraw or AI, they will draw very complex vector images and are are pre-Vista made applications, yet on Vista they will display and redraw their graphics 10x faster or more. I have one layered image that on WindowsXP and OSX takes close to 30 secs to redraw fully, yet on Vista it will redraw in less than 2 secs fully.

So if you work in the graphics world, Vista will impact your life tremendously. So existing and old applications get a tremedous speed boost when they are very graphically heavy applications.

- 3D composer. Vista like OSX sports a full Composer, so images never tear. Again this is a performance improvement over WindowsXP. It also features a full vector based composer, meaning that newer applications using the WPF side of Vista get even more of a performance increase, as it can talk to the composer in pure vector and redraws and changes can be communicated in vector instead of full bitmap redraw changes being shoved to the composer. This again not only adds more performance for applications that haven't even been released yet, but adds interface quality as Vista can properly anti-alias the vector images, etc without any work from the application.

Another nice 'visual' side effect of the graphics composer in Vista, is that is can scale 'old' application on high resolution displays. So if you want to get all the use out of the pixel on your 17" 1920x1200 display and don't have perfect eye sight, you can still run your desktop at 1920x1200 and Vista will scale things up to a level that you can see and look like a printed page.

- User Mode Video Drivers - Video in Vista has been put back in the user mode. This means more stability if a video drivers crashes. However, one clever side effect of how Vista has implemented the WDDM

Funny. Many things you mention are actually old news for many graphics coders. Yes, these are nice new features to see in Windows, but hardly an overall breakthrough.

- The RAM thing exists already - without the paging. Drivers can allocate AGP- and even Sysram to get some space for the data. Sysmem is obviously a very bad idea with AGP, but its there. With PCI, this is much less of an issue. There the drivers can transfer from/to sysram, which gets paged by the OS already.

- Running multiple games at once will obviously hurt their FPS, unless they are not very demanding (running Gothic 3 and Oblivion at the same time is not a good idea). Running several 3D apps side by side HAS to work in Vista since the entire interface is going to be a 3D application, actually. In fact, D3D10 adopted a server/client model from OpenGL here; in OGL it never was a big deal to run several GL apps at once, because they are clients using one server (the graphics card).

- Accelerated drawing: not going to happen. At least not on a primitive stage. The windows are VERY likely to be rectangular textures, but forget about drawing every line with 3D, this is just too inefficient as it chokes the CPU because of wait states. 3D engines usually avoid as many API calls as possible for this reason. CorelDraw's calls are likely to involve GDI. It is perfectly ok for GDI to draw in the window texture. This is faster than traditional GDI because pre-Vista GDI immediately shows the result and has TONS of waitstates built in. The texture approach just involves some writing in a memory block. (Afaik this is the same way Qt4 handles drawing with GL-acceleration, and it is really MUCH faster than traditional 2D.)

- The composer: well, it is really strange why nobody EVER thought of this before. You don't even need a fully-featured composer, just some simple double-buffering would do. This is the very reason why tearing does not happen with Aero, NOT the blending and composing. Turn off double-buffering, and the tearing is back.

As for the vector thing, this DOES sound like marketing babble. I want this in a more detailed form. It would be very strange to see entire bitmaps transferred to the composer anyway, and I doubt its done this way now; heck, even X11 does not handle it this way.

Scaling old apps will give you a blurred result because of the bilinear filtering. Still better than having huge pixels though. GDI calls could be scaled nicely, yes, by sending the coordinates through a scale before drawing. But bitmaps will get blurry (that is, all icons etc.)

- User mode drivers are back, finally. But how am I going to handle GPU driver crashes in Vista? There is no textmode console, so what if video just doesnt restart?

I agree that Vista is a leap, but it just doesnt make it more attractive, really. Its expensive, has a bazillion features that need to be turned off etc. Direct3D 10 is going to be the likely reason why I'm gonna get it (its new features are VERY cool, and I write 3D graphics stuff), as soon as VistaAntiSpy is available:-) but other than that, hm.. The Samba guys have to play catch-up again, because MS changes the SMB protocol yet again and keeps the specs secret, thus enforcing lock-in again. So I can forget using my Samba fileserver with Vista, not good.

Your apple shop is a monopoly, and we know monopolies reduce freedom. If freedom is the ability to satisfy wants, e.g. by choosing what to buy (a very narrow definition of freedom, but it's one you apply here) - then paying more for apples reduces your freedom to satisfy other wants.

You say, "Don't complain unless you can tell me how to fix the thing." We know one way to fix the thing: introduce choice. That's what free software is doing. That's why we need to support it and make it better, not simply say, "it doesn't do X today, so I don't even want to know." For some people, it's a practical choice. That's why Microsoft is afraid of free software.

But there's a wider issue here, and it's the reason I really care. Speech is freedom, but it isn't just a matter of choice: it's generative. It involves creating something original. In a world where computers have become central to communication, free speech depends on software. If that software is not free, there's a real danger to speech.

I'm a brilliant musician, but nobody knows. I want to share my music - but music players delete it after three plays. I have a video of an important political gaffe - but I can't share it all because YouTube has a 10 minute limit unless I'm certified. I have vital information about voting machine flaws - but I can't distribute it because it has the no-copy bit set. I filmed my son's first steps - but not it in high-resolution because I need a special encryption key. I tried to comment on Oedipus Rex on my blog - but the software blocked it as obscene.

This isn't the world we live in. Our freedom to speak is defended by our choice of software. But are the choices offered by proprietary software enough? When DVRs are limiting the ability to share content; when technology companies act as if Hollywood is their customer, not the people who buy their software; when Microsoft and Apple are starting to lock down what their systems can do, I don't think that they are. Because it's not enough to pick from someone else's choices: we have to be able to generate our own. That's what free software is about. I'm thrilled and proud of everyone who puts in the effort to make my freedom that much greater. You may not want that freedom. But don't tell me that's not the "domain of freedom", because I sure as hell do.

I was talking about FOSS in general, but I can focus in on operating systems. Trying to be a better Windows than Windows is a losing game, on which has been lost over and over (OS/2, GeoWorks, etc.). To do that, Linux would probably have to be ten times better. To succeed, Linux needs to redefine the game - and this is what it has been doing.

When Gutenberg produced the first printing press, he felt he needed to compete with handwritten manuscripts. He put a lot of effort into producing multiple variat

You are saying that you will OWN a computer in the midst of your living room, install a piece of software in it in order for it to work, you are going to do internet banking over it, send and receive private emails to your colleagues, family, loved ones and friends over it, preserve your private documents on it, and yet, you are o.k. with someone in a remote location having more control over it than you do ? To the extent that they can override whatever you want to do on it ?

What kind of over-trustful approach is this ? Are you living in a place where people still can sleep with their doors unlocked at night ?

Wouldn't this campaign fall under the definition of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt??!! After all, the FSF already hates Microsoft with a passion, and this is just another axe to grind here. I doubt they actually have even seen Vista or used it to know what exactly it is.

Slashdot and its minions seems to hate Microsoft FUD, but shouldn't you people have a problem with FUD on the other side? This site has gone full throttle on the anti-Vista campaign already and it isn't even on store shelves yet. Sheesh.

True. I think the campaign shoots itself by hyping it's own cause (although I expected that).If they see flaws in MS-OSs (as I do), point Joe Shmoe to Apple - it's the best alternative.

My linux desktop is more customised and intelligent than an Apple Desktop will be (as far as I'm concerned) because I've been configuring my bashrc & enlightenment config files for over a year - and always adding/evolving. Everything is automatic and on cron or timeout (from closing a open eterms to switching virtual desk

If they see flaws in MS-OSs (as I do), point Joe Shmoe to Apple - it's the best alternative.

No it isn't. Not by a longshot if you go by the FSF's beliefs. Their core principle is that people should be free to use their computers without any artificial software-induced restrictions. OSX may be partially free and open source "under the hood" but the top layers are every bit as proprietary as Windows.

I'd certainly say that Apple/OSX is better than Windows for "Joe Schmoe" and I would recommend that over Windows or Linux for someone who wants an elegant "just works" new computer. For myself, I prefer to build my own boxes and run Linux (though I have no qualms about using non-free software and drivers on my box)--but I recognize that in the present world, that just isn't right for everybody. "To each their own," "Choice is good," and all that jazz.

Actually, the campaign's agenda is to promote software freedom. Microsoft Windows doesn't do that, regardless of version. That OS is nothing but non-free software. gNewSense GNU/Linux does that because that OS is nothing but free software.

Also they wouldn't call "Linux" an OS when it's a kernel, denying themselves credit for their own OS project called GNU.

Better then getting them locked into someone else, who is actualy worse as far as DRM goes then MS.

How so? I've never had any problems with MacOS and DRM. In fact, the OS doesn't even have any kind of "activation" or serial numbers. I can install a single copy on as many machines as I like, violating the EULA, and Apple would never even know, let alone prevent it. What might you be referring to?

I wouldn't say it's FUD because there is no uncertainty. If you agree to that EULA you lose certain rights which they think are important that you wouldn't use if you were on Free Software...
There is also no doubt - you click "I agree" and the rights are gone...
And dare I say there is not even any fear in the end user - and that is something we should be really worried about

Well, then they should have an article citing examples from the EULA. The FSF tends to beat around the bush far too much; People will take your evidence more willingly if you don't make them read a 10-page manifesto without facts before you get to the meat. I like what the FSF has done, but often their evangelizing is often terrible. Linux sugar has caught more new users than FSF vinegar.

Wouldn't this campaign fall under the definition of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt??!!

I think that depends on whether or not the claims the FSF is making are true. FUD is caused by the unknown. So if the arguments presented by the FSF are unsubstantiated or nebulous, then I would agree with you.

On the other hand, if they present a clear description of what Vista does and does not do, it seems to me they are only providing people with the information they need to make an informed choice. Given the benefit

No, because it's not fear, we're all certain of what Vista will include (many have already seen versions of it, including the version that will be distributed to millions of users), and therefore there's no doubt as to what Microsoft Windows Vista will do to a user's software freedom.You talk about Microsoft and the FSF as if they're equivalent yet they're not. One has a history of locking-in users to software they can't run, inspect, share, or modify anytime they want for any reason. The other promotes t

No really, this might be a new low for the FSF. I mean, really people, does this tactic ever work? Far from becoming an effective bad PR campaign it is going to further elevate consumer and user awareness of Vista.

While were at it, why aren't we bashing the hell out of Apple and it's release of Shaguar? After all, Jaguar runs on fully DRM'd, TCP'd hardware. The same cannot be said for Windows users.

It's all well and good to say that Vista is a "don't upgrade" for the next twelve months -- but there are improvements in it, some of which rise to the level of intuition, and right now there's no Free way to get those improvements.

It's all well and good to say that Vista is a "don't upgrade" for the next twelve months -- but there are improvements in it, some of which rise to the level of intuition, and right now there's no Free way to get those improvements.

Locking the users into proprietary software and DRM are not improvements for users.

Here is a video of Richard Stallman [google.com] on the Free Software Movement and the reasons why it is so important that things like GNU/Linux exist.

Locking the users into proprietary software and DRM are not improvements for users.

I am writing this on my Vista-installed laptop, through Firefox. I just checked my e-mail on Thunderbird, and, if I thought it was worth my time, I could intall OpenOffice. I have a few gigabytes of music here, all MP3 without any DRM on them at all.

The only thing that Vista does to "reduce" my freedoms is have better support for DRM-enabled stores. So, if I want to purchase music instead of getting a CD from the store (as I prefer), I can go to someone other than iTunes, and put my music on a device that isn't made by Apple.

Does MS have DRM here? Sure. Can I remove it entirely at will? You betcha. Is this entirely irrelevant to the new features MS put in Vista, like the GPU-utilizing pretty windows or the "press a button and type a command" functionality of the start menu? Yep.

Everyone who cares or will care knows about the FSF, and what "free software" means. If you want to discourage "not-free" software, it's time to start promoting how good free software is -- otherwise, the question is "are those freedoms worth the annoyance"

OSS people focusing on something they don't like and missing the big picture. As the parent noted, you are in NO WAY REQUIRED to use Vista's DRM. You can still play your MP3s, LAME still runs fine, Winamp still runs fine. You can do as you've always done in XP. They'll be new DRM'd music and stores with it, which you are free to ignore. I'll repeat again: This changes nothing with what you have already.So yes, Vista's DRM support does give you more choices. You have the choice to get access to the restricte

Joe Vista user reading that explanation is going to quit half way through wondering wtf this lunatic is babbling about and probably thinking the author must have sadly neglected as a child to be so angry about something that works fine for Joe at home.

All the effort should be spent on advocating your advantages in a positive manner - and then you can compare yourself to the competition, you have a solution to the problem, you're not merely pointing out the bad stuff.

Negative marketing has been shown time and time again to annoy the people that catch the brunt of it - political campaigns through to Apple adverts. Maybe it will stop a few people upgrading, but it won't make them think of switching another solution unless you present that alternative solution in a wondrous halo of wonder fixing all of their issues.

I am sympathetic to the FSF's objectives here, but judging by the reaction here on Slashdot this isn't the way to go about it. It's pretty clear what the benefits of a well-funded PR machine are. If they'd done a couple of focus groups or surveys, this might have been shut down pretty quickly, or modified so it didn't irritate people so much. But I doubt they can afford to do that.

On the other hand, maybe the Slashdot crowd is a special case. We have advocates of free software, for whom software freed

...plenty of ignorant MSFT-aplogists' bitching about how the "zealots" are going "mad" about "Windows being teh suxx" and all after this campaign has been announced, but, please, care to tell me where the FSF fails to tell the truth with such nifty things as "signed drivers only [osnews.com]", "protected audio path [wikipedia.org]" an the like coming after consumers, which are being promised an overall richer and safer experience in casual computing, but are being entirely stripped of their fair use rights by these "added features" instead?

This kind of overhyped FUD campaign just makes the FSF look like a bunch of nutty hippies. People don't give a shit about losing a little bit of control over their PC. The care about features. So unless someone can offer a competitive OS that offers the features (not just technical features) that users want and on top of that offer more control over one's PC they're not going to care.

Region encoding on DVDs sucks... but does that keep people from buying DVDs... NO NO NO!

The FSF has never been worried about appearing as "nutty hippies". Quite the opposite.

Region encoding on DVDs sucks... but does that keep people from buying DVDs... NO NO NO!

The fact that no-one can service a new Ford except a registered Ford dealer, who has prices for his services set by Ford, doesn't stop people from buying new Fords either. This is why we need the government to step in and enforce anti-trust laws, but they're so paid off that they people can't rely on them to do anything anymore. This is why we need political action, and that is exactly what the FSF is doing.

Really.:) I think the message that the site wish to send is good - don't use Vista since it limits your freedoms. OK for me. I can take care of my freedoms on my own no problem.

But the point I am making is the site is crappy. The site is ugly. It consists of bunch of long TEXTS (like anybody likes to read long texts). It should communicate better with some pictorials and clear picture of what Vista will not allow you to do.

I was thinking the same. The design sucks, it has NO SUBSTANCE whatsoever. It is sad that they are so incredibly lame at communicating their idea.

I went in wanting to be convinced, but instead it comes across as a Fanboi site like many others pointed out. The main page should have the juice straight away. You get in and you read the bulletpoints: Windoze is teh sux because a) It will take away your freedom to copy your legally owned music (insert link)

b) It will spy on you, reporting your every move back to the corporations (insert link)

And so on. They really don't have a clue how to present the information, they are overly verbose for the intended audience which it is very clear they don't understand, the design is so ugly that it takes away much credibility, their claims are not backed up by concise facts, they constantly appeal to emotion, and they don't offer clear-cut instrucions for the alternative.

Also their choice of gNewSense as an alternative OS is weak because it lacks in the same departments: null communication skills, poor design, ZERO instructions. They could at least have picked Ubuntu, which looks much more professional and at least would make an unexperienced user that the thing may actually work.

Why the FSF and other antimicrosofites can't get it through their heads that the average windows user is not stupid but they are also utterly unconcerned with the technical side. From the few distros that I've seen, only Red Hat and Ubuntu seem to have picked up on this fact. If it looks ugly it breeds distrust, and if it is complicated it's deemed not worth it. Free as in Gratis is not enough. In fact, it's no different from a cheap knockoff in their minds. Don't take my word for it. Talk about it to people around you that are not tech fans and you will see, they are not idiots, they simply have different interest and this is a very, very bad attempt at interesting them and it will backfire.

Unless they completely revamp the site and make it look as serious and well presented as the marketing sites for Vista are/will be, offer sensible, to-the-point arguments, and a clear and easy guide to upgrade they would appear to the uninformed like a National Enquirer next to a Wall Street Journal.

I'm registering at the site to tell them this now, if many of us do the same maybe they will listen.

I cringe every time RMS steps out into the scene. It's like trying to tell someone to stop beating his dog, and having PETA step out; or having one of your friends jokingly call you a fag, and having half of Gay Pride suddenly show up behind him; or groping your girlfriend, and having three women from NOW jump up from the next table and tell you how much of an asshole you are and start yelling out into the whole restaurant how guys are all pigs.

RMS is the definition of a modern politician. His campaigns are "XXX IS TRASH BECAUSE IT RAPES YOU OF YOUR FREEDOMS AND KICKS YOUR DOG AND TOUCHES YOUR TEENAGE DAUGHTER DON'T EVER TOUCH XXX BECAUSE IT WILL CHAIN YOU TO YOUR CHAIR AND GLUE YOUR EYES OPEN AND MAKE YOU GIVE YOUR SOUL TO THE BIG GIANT HEAD!!!!!!!111111111" I'm sick and tired of him, and his GPL (LGPL is a great general purpose license), and his bullshit. The only time he says something nice is when XXX becomes GPL XXX; if you want free marketing, start your new product closed source and get RMS to shriek at you, then open source it so he gives you tons of free positive press for 5 weeks.

Why can't we have someone out to show how great Open Source Software is? Talk about what Ubuntu Linux offers, what RedHat and Novel can do for you, what people like about Debian and Gentoo enough to make them use those over more sophisticated derivatives (like Ubuntu), and the various applications. Don't come out here spewing about how everything else is crap, because ONLY the fanatics care; anyone else either wishes you weren't representing them, doesn't care because they're already using OSS and never actually listen to you talk, or uses something else and doesn't quite get why you're such a nutball over this "DRM" and "proprietary freedom restrictions" crap.

I'm not a dedicated MicroSoft hater, but I do miss the days when I gave my computer "commands" not "suggestions". Nothing is quite so aggrivating as hidden directories and being told that I cannot delete something.

Is the FSF seriously backing a "distro" that's just Ubuntu with the logos and useful software taken out and calling it gNewSense (which sounds a/lot/ like gNuisance)? One that requires 35GB of HD space to create and install? Yes, this is a great way to get people to avoid Vista!

I'm not trolling... It is seriously unfortunate that they do not make more realistic recommendations that people might actually consider.

That's just for their script for building your own customised distro from gNewSense, for the purposes of becoming the next Ubuntu or debian or gNewsense. The final step in those instructions is 'Push your files to a mirror and publicise'.

If you want to run gNewsense, it'll probably be similar to any other debian/Ubuntu based distro.

I wonder whether this is a classic case of misplaced energy and effort on the part of the FSF. Why don't they (the FSF) direct their energy to improving "end user" software on free operating systems like Linux with GUIs like KDE, GNOME, XFCE etc?

I find the user experience on all these platforms to be greatly wanting! In addition, all user software I have seen on these platforms still sucks big time!

Has he used the RC? I'm finding it a huge upgrade on just about every front. A welcome improvement that will increase my productivity. Of course I'm going to need to upgrade my system to get the most out of it, but I was planning on doing that in February anyway.

This is nothing more than a giant pile of FUD. Accountability in drivers is a huge upgrade, not some soul sucking attempt to steal your humanity. Besides... since when did 'freedom' apply to our computers and operating systems. What's next? My office chair needs the freedom to vote? If I double click on it, it does the job I want it to do, I don't care if Stalin programmed it and titled it "3D Studio Max for the advancement of the Social Utopia and down fall of Democracy." It works it works. Vista works very well. Windows XP hasn't let me down yet, and I'm looking forward to some new glitz and sparkle.

My cameras are black boxes, my lights are black boxes, my chroma paint is top secret, I eat proprietary cereal, my car's design is patented, my apartment design is owned by another company, I can't even paint my walls without permission. but wait... my Operating System... THAT's a holy grail of democracy and freedom. I use almost 0 Open Source software day in and day out, because in my field, it's all worthless except for linux. Gimp? Pfff... yeah why don't I just use MS Paint?

If the author drives an open source car, lives in an open source house, uses only open source hardware, only eats food from freely available recipes and sleeps on a mattress with a freely available design I'll give a shit.

>>>"If I double click on it, it does the job I want it to do..... My cameras are black boxes, my lights are black boxes, my chroma paint is top secret, I eat proprietary cereal, my car's design is patented, my apartment design is owned by another company, I can't even paint my walls without permission"

Imagine your camera not taking a birthday photo because it detects someone singing happy birthday in the background.... VISTA

4. Driver SupportVista includes thousands of drivers, but most have been created directly by Microsoft. Many hardware manufacturers do not yet have drivers available for Vista.

This is not Vista-specific, same thing happened in e.g. Windows 2000. Or Windows 95. Or other significant upgrades. Trust me, this will become less of an issue or "bad thing" in 2007, and then, once again, competing operating systems are likely to be worse off in the driver area. Unfortunately. The most common OS developer tend to get the best drivers because driver developers likes making profit from supporting the most common operating systems.

And of course MS made most built-in drivers. They always do in the shipping versions of large OS upgrades. If third party devs aren't done in time, MS will ship reduced functionality to give the user at least something to work with until the real driver is done. NVIDIA, Creative Labs and more are currently developing more complete Vista drivers. You can even read up on this on their sites.

6. MemoryVista loves RAM, but more is better. Plan on 2 Gbytes to meet real-world needs.

1 GB works here on my test install. I can run Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Office 2007, Guild Wars.Can they be more precise about "real-world needs"? Working at rendering industry buildings in 3D Studio?

8. ActivationThe need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.

That's why there are KMS servers to reduce it to only one server connecting to MS every half a year per company with 25+ installs, i.e. "mass deployments".

9. Storage SpaceWith Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.

Is 10 GB making up a large part of current hard drives? I see similar sizes in competing operating systems.

10. BackupSee No. 9. Backing up desktops will take a great deal of space.

See above.

11. UrgencyUnlike Windows XP and Windows 95, there seems to be no must-have reasons behind Vista.

Was suddenly security looking like hell in Windows 9x and XP non-issues? Interesting how they're only issues when it's suitable to complain about them, otherwise not. Vista may still have its share of these issues, but it's way too early to say there are no must-have reasons behind Vista compared to earlier Windows releases. There may not be in case of trouble, but there may also be big ones. They should not make this judgment at this time as it's premature.

12. Learning CurveVista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.

Did this stop KDE's first release? Gnome's? Windows 3.0? Windows 95?Do this author think Windows XP's UI therefore is excellent?What is the problem exactly, or is the author only stating the blindingly obvious?

13. CostMoving to Vista can prove to be expensive when one considers the price of the OS, the cost of hardware upgrades and the cost of migration.

Yes, moving to new OS's tend to cost a lot. That's why we're still running even Windows 2000 at places.And again, I'm not sure of what hardware upgrades they're talking of.Memory = see above, graphics cards = similar to in XP if you don't need the Aero eye candy which I can't see too many companies really hungering for.

19. InstallationCan take hours on some systems. Upgrades are even slower.

... but installation is quicker than on XP thanks to Vista's image based install.However, note how they conveniently fail to compare to other operating systems, Microsoft's or others.I'm sure I can find hardware where a full install of Mandriva will take "hours" on as well.On my 4 year old hardware, Vista install took ~25 mins.

21. 50 Million Lines Of CodeEven with the five years of development and long beta test period that went into Vis

It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does.

I dunno, for me the most important thing about owning a computer is productivity - to be able to do the tasks I want to do. I could migrate to a non-proprietary system, but I would not benefit if it had fewer applications that I find useful. I can't write my own high-level applications. Nor do the Open Source and Free alternatives meet my needs yet. Of course, control is nice, but my proprietary OS (MacOS) gives me more control than I actually use, in addition to great applications. If it stopped me from working with those apps, or locked up the media I used, then it would be an issue.

An analogy might be automatic transmission on a car, or electronic systems in a car. It gives less control and serviceability - but most users find the benefits of automatic transmission and electronics to be worth it. I could buy an old Chevy that I could fix myself - but then I would suffer many drawbacks in actually using the vehicle. Or games consoles - they are not as customizable as a PC system, but most people just want to play games, and a console makes this goal a lot easier to accomplish.

It's rather annoying when people assume what the most important thing is to me.

"the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does"

Yeah, I invite my friends over to show off how much control I have over it.

this is just asinine. The most important aspect of ME owning and using a computer is that it does something useful for me. (like letting me post on slashdot or look at porn) If I was interested in control, I would use a pencil and paper.

That's really what it's about. It doesn't "let you," you tell it to do it and it does it. That's control. Of course you don't invite your friends over to show you have control over your computer; you take that control for granted. It's not important to you because it's there. Let it go missing and you can be pretty certain it would become the most important part of a computer for you, as you struggl

That website is pretty low on content and for the heck of it I read the links on the right as well. The 25 shortcomings one is pretty ludicrous. You should read it.

Most home users don't give a shit about SMB2. Most users are going to get Vista with new hardware, so their needing new hardware point is moot and really is it a shortcoming of Vista that it won't run on old hardware or is it a shortcoming of the hardware. The 2 gigs of ram to run Vista is bollocks - these guys havent even booted upto the RCs have they. He complains about a lack of driver support from the hardware manufacturer - how can you spin a hardware manufacturers problem into a shortcoming of vista?

They talk about lack of compatibility with AV products but do fail to mention a lot of things M$ is doing better with security. He actually complains that there is a learning curve with Vista - that its different enough than XP that users and technicians will need retraining - I've tried it - I don't need retraining. And whats the alternative - switch to linux - I run Debian in lab and Zenwalk at home and have run a whole bunch of other distros and I can assure you that any users that switch will need retraining there too.

By the time he gets to 20 he isn't he making grammatical sentences and he actually claims that theres bound to be bugs in 50 million lines of code and a five year beta test period - I'd agree but it isn't because theres 50 million lines of code because dear lod Linux also has a lot of lines of code. THis also sounds little better than SCO claiming well theres millions of lines of code in linux - some of it is bound to be ours.

I'm not going to go on bashing the article - its pretty obvious its biased and badly written in about 15 mins and he isn't even trying. The most valid point for me is going to be the inability of wordpad to open.doc files but I don't use them so much anymore.

Heres my list of things that are Bad with Vista1) DRM - especially the Hollywood mandated HDCP and its Protected Video Path crap. The minute they roll this out you will see studios using HDCP because they can and if you don't have a brand spanking new monitor then there is a nice little ICT to drop your content straight back down to 480p and good riddance - now if I just bought HD content and have hardware perfectly capable of running it without needing an upgrade except to satisfy the Hollywood moguls then I damned well expect it to run and don't like being shafted. Even if movie studios do decide not to enforce ICT until 2012 (bollocks they will do it in a couple of years because they can)

2) UAC - this is a great idea in principle but the last I checked in implementation it was too goddamn annoying and I'm sure most people will just turn it off.

I used to have an issue with the limited license transfers but they've taken care of that one (not if you get your Vista from an OEM in which case you get what you paid for imho) I had no driver issues. If I did I don't think I'd be blaming MS and rather my shitty hardware manufacturer.

Thats it. Thats my list of woes with Vista. Now I'm not going to add my list of things that are bad with MS....

This is not specifically directed at you as I've seen this many times before but I'm tired of people being so narrow-minded as to think that anyone who disagrees with them must be a paid shill or astroturfer. As hard as it may be to believe some people just honestly don't agree with you on everything.

I like linux and prefer it over windows. And i'm not a microsoft fan either. but i must say that i don't like the sound of this particular FSF project. if you have a product (Linux) you should spend your time promoting it and enhancing it. not trying to degrade you'r competitors product (no matter how truthful it might be).